This Scientist Development Award (SDA) application outlines a program of research to study depressive disorders in maltreated children. The career development and research plans are designed to enable the candidate to incorporate psychobiological research paradigms in future studies of the development of maltreated children. Dr. Neal Ryan, Program Director of the NIMH Program Project Grant (PO5 MH 41712), "The Psychobiology of Depression in Children and Adolescents" (PDCA), University of Pittsburgh, Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic (WPIC), will serve as Preceptor. A cross-sectional study examining assessments of maltreatment, attachment, attachment related cognitions, psychobiological parameters, and family history of psychiatric illness in physically abused children who meet criteria for Major Depression OMD) is planned. Children that participate in the PDCA project will serve as comparison subjects in dds study, as them are no children in the PDCA project with a known history of abuse. It is suggested that studying children at-risk for affective illness due to different etiological factors (e.g. abuse, familial loading for affective illness) may help to identify meaningful subtypes of childhood depressives, and generate hypotheses regarding alternative pathways to the etiology of depression in different high risk groups. Vulnerability to develop depression in maltreated children is proposed to occur through both cognitive and neurobiological mechanisms, with the likelihood of maltreated children developing depressive disorders affected by genetic and environmental risk and protective factors.